Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Religion: Do You Take it With or Without? by Rev. Annie Foerster

A sermon preached on Sunday, February 8, 2015 at Denton Unitarian Universalist Fellowship

When people find out that I’m a Unitarian Universalist
minister, their first question if often, “Is it true that Unitarians don’t
believe in God?” Up until now I have given the wrong answer. Actually, I have
had a number of wrong answers that I used.

But, as I said, up until now I have given the wrong
answer. After due deliberation and calm consideration, I have decided that the
next time I’m asked the question, “Do Unitarian Universalists believe in God or
not?” I am going to give the proper response, the right answer. I’m simply
going to say, “Yes.”

Now that might surprise many of you. You may be thinking,
“She certainly hasn’t talked to me about this.” According to recent surveys
about half of Unitarian Universalists on their own would answer, “Definitely
not!” But I’m still going to say yes, and I will tell you why: It’s the wrong
question.

If others have to ask that question of any person with a
stated religious affiliation, you can bet they’ve already assumed the answer is
no. If they heard that Unitarian Universalists are a sect, or believe we’re
part of a Humanist conspiracy to bring evil into the world, as some people do,
they are going to hear NO, no matter what I say. And, if they believe that
their God—their single, unimaginative concept of God—is the one true response
to the question, the only maker and shaker of the universe, they have to hear
YES, no matter what I say, because that is the only answer that makes sense to
them. That’s why it’s the wrong question.

From experience, I have come to realize that what is
really being asked is, “Are Unitarian Universalists religious?” The Western mind, in the traditions of Judaism, Islam
and Christianity, without God, or without Allah and Mohammed, or without God,
Jesus and the Holy Spirit, there is no religion. If there is even a rumored
suggestion that some Unitarian Universalists do not worship someone or something
called God, then how can we be a church, a religious community? To the Eastern
mind, this dilemma is not so obvious. The Buddhists do very well with a god;
we’re all gods, they teach.The Hindus
do very well with hundreds of gods.

Now, if I were asked the real question, “Are Unitarian
Universalists religious?” I would have no second thoughts, no hesitation. From
my belief that religion is an inborn facet of humanity, and that how you
consciously live your life, how you order your life, and how you celebrate your
life, are your religious responses to that fact, I would answer, “Yes,
Unitarian Universalists are religious. They are reflective, thoughtful,
compassionate and kind.”

Having dismissed the original question, I would like to
go back to it. This God business still gives some of us a great deal of
trouble; it makes us very nervous as a group. For many it smacks of the
I’m-going-to-tell-you-what-to-believe school of religion, which stands against
our belief in freedom of religion and the individual response to religious
experience. For others, it hits at superstition and the supernatural, which
stand against our belief in rational thought as the basis of faith.

In the traditional, Western Judeo-Christian comprehension
of religion, it could be said that I am an atheist, although I do not label
myself that way. One Sunday, a visitor of another faith took me aside during
coffee and said, “You never once spoke of God. Is this common in your church?”

It’s true I don’t invite God into the sanctuary every
Sunday that I preach. That is primarily because of my training as a
semanticist, not as a theologian. I know that the word ‘god’ is loaded way
beyond the concepts it points to. There is an excellent chance that you would
not know what I meant—would not understand my intention. There is a strong
possibility that you would not respond to my use of the term in harmony with
its intent until we have had more conversations about it.

In other churches and synagogues, my Christian and Jewish
colleagues speak freely of This house of
God and address their congregations as God’s
people. This is a kind of shorthand for a symbolic concept that already has
agreement among them. We don’t share such an agreement, you and I, so we don’t
use or respond to the symbol.

There are many forms of the term to which I don’t
respond. To the jealous and vengeful entity, who chooses sides and pre-selects
the winning team, whom the Ancient Hebrews called God, I certainly do not
respond. To the creator, who has today and all eternity already figured out,
who operates me like a puppet, and who punishes me for my pre-ordained
transgression, who the Calvinists called God, I do not respond. To the builder
who set up a universe the way people set up model railroads, and then walked
away, who the Newtonian deists called God, I do not respond. To a super Daddy
or heavenly Mommy who expects a compliant and eternal child, or to a supreme
Ruler who demands a kneeling and humble servant, whom many call God, I do not
respond. I can imagine these symbols, by they are not in my imagination,
indicative of the sacred that I find in life.

Out of personal experience, out of rational thought, out
of intuitive understanding, out of creative imagination, out of spiritual
sensitivity and out of moral imperative, I do respond to many aspects of life
religiously—that is: morally, reverently, thoughtfully and compassionately—but
I choose not to name them God. Konstantin Kolenda, in his book Religion Without God, wrote: The idea of God is our recognition of our own
longing to take our highest ideals seriously. The idea of God is our
recognition of our own longing to take our highest ideals seriously. To that I
respond. It is your own response to life, your own highest ideals, that I would
have you consider this morning as I continue to discuss the concept of God.

Some detractor of a God-concept would have us believe
that the primitives created God out of ignorance, to explain all that their
lack of knowledge and understanding could not otherwise explain; or out of fear
and smallness. Rather, we should be astounded that their sophistication.
Dostoyevsky wrote, “What is astonishing is not that God should exist, but that
such a noble idea should enter the head of such a despicable creature as
humanity.” This evolutionary smugness we possess belies the fact that after new
knowledge is gained and new moral attitudes accepted, we will be the primitives
to future generations. I prefer to think that we all, at whatever age or
evolution we exist, confront certain human questions, and that our response to
them can be framed in a symbol, a metaphor, that we relate to religiously, not
out of ignorance, but out of our need for deeper meaning than mere words can
express.

When Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers made a series of
video programs on religion some years ago, many Unitarian Universalist were
transfixed before their television sets. We were allowed into these religious
questions without the discomfort of standing too close to the familiar, and
possibly once rejected, religious answers. And when Campbell turned to the
camera and said, “But, Bill, God is a metaphor,” and smiled that smile that
seemed to say, “Don’t you get it?” some of us breathed a little easier. We got
it. Throughout religious history, God has stood in metaphor for the human
response to the eternal questions. And what are these questions?

Where did all of
this come from? Who hasn’t wondered where and how it all began? In the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu wondered when he
wrote:

Something mysteriously formed,

Born before heaven and earth,

In the silence and void,

Standing alone and unchanging,

Ever present an in motion,

Perhaps it is the mother of the world.

I do not know its name.

Call it the Tao (the Way).

For lack of a better word, I call it Great.

Lao Tzu did not choose to call his understanding of the
beginning of the world God, but Tao, the Way, saying there is a beginning, let
us call it the mother. This all we know, he said. The rest is the nature of
things. Don’t look for other answers Just seek the Way. Others have chosen to
respond to the question of beginning with the metaphor of a creator, of a
build, or shaper, planner or parent. Whether the response chooses the metaphor
or the metaphor suggests the response, is not always clear.

What happens when I
cease to be? All of us, at one time or another in our lives, face that
terrible aloneness, the confrontation with our own mortality, the knowledge of
death. Keats wrote, as if writing for us all:

When I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
. . .

When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d
face,

Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

And think that I may never live to trace

Their shadows with the magic hand of chance:

Then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think

Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

How we respond to the inhospitable universe and to the
finiteness of existence often depends upon our personalities, our experiences
and our successes or failures in life. The metaphors we choose to acknowledge
or explain death are either ones of companionship, strong support, or the
extension of time beyond knowledge. The metaphors say: I am not alone; I have
something to lean on; there is time enough and space. The metaphors say whatever
is required to respond to the question. The metaphor is the response and the
response is the metaphor, because the question is no universal, so underlying,
so overarching, that an intellectual response I not sufficient.

How we respond to the mystery of life—to our very
existence; to the awe that awakens in us a sense of a power outside ourselves;
to the feeling of harmony that sometimes envelopes us—the oneness with time and
space; how we respond to revelational insights; to that which is transcendent but
connect us; or to that which is imminent but separate from us, is a part of our
religious identity. Our response both shapes us and defines us, and out of our
response comes the metaphor for life that symbolizes and directs and
anticipates our future responses.

Our response to life is made in celebration and in
mourning; in acknowledgement and in gratitude; in transformation and in
renewal. It sustains us in the search for what is good and the struggle with
what is evil; it widens and deepens the self and connects us with that beyond
ourselves. Our responses are infinite, and so are our metaphors.

Maybe it would be neater to imagine all our responses as
one God, but I prefer the playful and imaginative response of the
Brihad-Aranyak Upanishad that claims knowledge—Knowledge!—of 3,306 Gods and also 33 Gods, and 2, and 1 ½ and 1 God.
The 3,306 Gods are their Powers—the things they can do, like sunrises and
sprouting seeds. The 33 Gods comprise eight excellences:
fire, earth, wind, atmosphere, sun, sky, moon and stars; plus 11 laments—which are ten sighs and the self; plus 12 months of
the year, which carry the whole world along and around; plus thunder; plus animals. The 2 Gods are food and
breath. The 1 ½ are the Wind that purifies and the World
that prospers from the purification, so close are they that they cannot be
counted as two. The 1 God is Life
itself. And all of them are metaphors.

Often, in religious institutions, we are taught the
metaphor before we experience it. That is when it is most convenient to have a
sing name—God. But when our personal experience is not the same as the
teaching, we conclude that we do not believe in the metaphor. By extension, we
do not believe in the concept. And, when we allow ourselves to create new
responses, new metaphors, we are understandably reluctant to call them by the
old name, the old metaphor we rejected.

That is why the question is wrong. It should never be,
“Do you believe in God?” It should not even be, “Do you believe?” The question,
if it must be asked, should be, “What is at the center of your experience and
faith, and know and response? Can you tell me just one of its 3,306 names?

From the pulpit, I do not speak of God, except in the
intellectual sense, as I have today. But I do speak of Life, as the great and
transcending mystery, and as the wondrous and terrible gift. I speak of the
enigma, the blessing and the curse of Life. I could, if pressed, call that God,
but I choose not to. I speak of the power and the empowerment of Love—of the
gift we give of accepting on another as we are, while challenging each other to
become more than we are. I could, if pressed, name that God, but I choose not
to. I speak of Grace—of gifts from the universe, unexpected, undeserved,
unexplainable—gifts like happiness, treasures like friends. And I could, if
pressed, imagine these as God. But the name and the metaphor seem too small.
And so I struggle with language that will never be sufficient for meaning, just
as you do. And I believe what I have come to believe and try to share the best
of that, just as you do.

And that is why, when I am asked if Unitarian
Universalists believe in God, I know the real question,
and I will say, “Yes, we are a very religious people.”